Israeli incursions in the West Bank are the largest since the Second Intifada, while airstrikes over Gaza continue for a fifth consecutive night.

“The ‘party’ tonight is lasting longer than usual,” says my friend from Gaza. He recently married, and he and his wife moved to the top floor of an apartment building with panoramic views of Gaza City.

For the last five nights, those views have given him a reporter’s vantage point on a sustained Israeli bombing campaign – the longest since Operation Pillar of Defense, the nine-day attack on the 25-mile-long strip in November of 2012. At the time, Israel justified the bombing, which included attacks that Human Rights Watch determined had violated the laws of war, as a deterrent to Hamas rockets.
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The current campaign claims no such consistency. If the aim is to retrieve three yeshiva students who went missing in the West Bank — on occupied land under full Israeli military control — then why is Israel bombing Gaza?